If you are a user of Google Docs but prefer to use some older Microsoft Office-based document formats, you might want to make some preparations to change those plans. Google has announced that a number of older Microsoft Office document formats won't be supported for its Google Docs service very soon.

A post on the Google Apps page states that, starting on October 1st, Google Docs users won't be able to download documents in the .doc, .xls, and .ppt formats, which were used by Microsoft Office from 1997 to 2003.

As TheNextWeb.com points out, there are still a lot of businesses and consumers that might still have the older versions of Microsoft Office installed on their PCs. This change, which was announced only a few days before it is supposed to go into effect, will likely cause businesses that still use the older versions of Office some some problems. There's no word on why Google made this sudden change.

Microsoft has, of course, launched its own online document software suite in Office 365. A new version is scheduled to be launched sometime in early 2013, alongside the launch of the stand alone Office 2013 software productivity product.